{"id":29750,"date":"2023-02-20T18:47:28","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T18:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=29750"},"modified":"2023-02-20T18:47:30","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T18:47:30","slug":"turkeyquakes-of-6-4-and-5-8-magnitude-shake-southern-province-of-hatay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/02\/20\/turkeyquakes-of-6-4-and-5-8-magnitude-shake-southern-province-of-hatay\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey:Quakes of 6.4 and 5.8 magnitude shake southern province of Hatay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake and a second measuring 5.8 have hit Turkey\u2019s southern province of Hatay, terrifying those left in a region devastated by twin earthquakes two weeks ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest quakes, less powerful than the 7.8- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that tore a path of destruction through southern Turkey and northern Syria on 6 February, threaten yet more devastation in a region where many people have fled their destroyed homes for the safety of other towns and villages outside the quake zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It struck at a depth of just 2km (1.2 miles), the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said, potentially magnifying its impact at ground level. It was centred near the southern Turkish city of Antakya and was felt in Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turkey\u2019s disaster management agency AFAD said the epicentre of the larger quake was below the Defne district of Hatay, in a region where many have complained of a lacklustre government response to first earthquakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFAD warned residents to stay away from the Mediterranean coastline in Hatay, fearing a potential tsunami of up to half a metre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Hatay town of Ekinci, Ata Ko\u015far \u2013 who lost his brother, sister-in-law and nephew when their nearby luxury apartment block collapsed during the earthquakes two weeks ago \u2013 said: \u201cIt was the first day we\u2019d decided to stay in our house as it\u2019s just one floor, and I was using our heater to try to stay warm, demonstrating what to do in case another earthquake happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was lying on the floor, and as I was lying there another earthquake happened. We heard what sounded like more buildings collapsing again, and more damage to our house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muna al-Omar, a resident of Antakya, said she was in a tent in a park when the 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit. \u201cI thought the earth was going to split open under my feet,\u201d she said, crying as she held her seven-year-old son in her arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs there going to be another aftershock?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of those who had remained in Hatay for two weeks after the first quakes said they had done so out of fear of losing their homes entirely, or a sense that they had nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The death toll in Turkey from the quakes two weeks ago rose to 41,156 on Monday, AFAD said, and it was expected to climb further, with 385,000 apartments known to have been destroyed or seriously damaged and many people still missing. At least 47,000 people are estimated to have died across Turkey and Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, said construction work on nearly 200,000 apartments in 11 earthquake-hit provinces of Turkey would begin next month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hours earlier, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on a visit to Turkey that Washington would help \u201cfor as long as it takes\u201d as rescue operations and aftershocks were winding down and the focus turned to towards urgent shelter and reconstruction work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blinken viewed the devastation in Hatay province with his Turkish counterpart, Mevl\u00fct \u00c7avu\u015fo\u011flu, on Sunday, pledging an additional \u00a383m in aid to Turkey and Syria on top of the \u00a371m initially pledged by Joe Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to put into words,\u201d Blinken said<\/a>, trying to describe what he saw. \u201cCountless buildings, communities, streets, damaged or fully destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the survivors of the earthquakes are about 356,000 pregnant women who urgently need access to health services, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA) has said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They include 226,000 women in Turkey and 130,000 in Syria, about 38,800 of whom will deliver in the next month. Many of them are sheltering in camps or exposed to freezing temperatures and struggling to get food or clean water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Syria, already shattered by more than a decade of civil war, most deaths have been in the north-west, where the United Nations said 4,525 people were killed. The area is controlled by insurgents at war with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, complicating aid efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Syrian officials say 1,414 people were killed in areas under the control of Assad\u2019s government, amid concerns that the true figure was likely to be far higher before the second earthquakes struck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake and a second measuring 5.8 have hit Turkey\u2019s southern province of Hatay, terrifying those left in a region devastated by twin earthquakes two weeks ago. The latest quakes, less powerful than the 7.8- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that tore a path of destruction through southern Turkey and northern Syria on 6 February, threaten […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4836,6850,8311,5522,9586,9350,5178,6044,7960,9331,10327,7234,10418,12326,8116,5241,9292,7280,5049,9585,9505,8057,9127,6496,5575,2264,9584,12634,10598,2471,9515,10342,9667,10634,5973,6831,12085,7964,11973,2451,3805,6965,6264,3349,8594,2570,5465,2757,7999,6348,1151,5251,2354,8869,3954,5320,10415,594],"class_list":["post-29750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-access","tag-aid","tag-antony-blinken","tag-arms","tag-ata-kosar","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-biden","tag-blinken","tag-case","tag-city","tag-civil-war","tag-death","tag-death-toll","tag-decade","tag-destruction","tag-died","tag-earth","tag-earthquake","tag-egypt","tag-ekinci","tag-european","tag-fear","tag-february","tag-food","tag-france","tag-government","tag-hatay","tag-health","tag-homes","tag-joe-biden","tag-killed","tag-law","tag-lebanon","tag-lost","tag-mediterranean","tag-missing","tag-nations","tag-north","tag-one","tag-pregnant","tag-president","tag-split","tag-survivors","tag-syria","tag-tsunami","tag-turkey","tag-un","tag-unfpa","tag-united-nations","tag-us","tag-us-secretary-of-state","tag-war","tag-washington","tag-water","tag-will","tag-women","tag-work","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}